Personal mobile communication/computing devices such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), two-way pagers and the like are sometimes collectively called “mobile devices”. The latest generations of mobile devices provide their users with the ability to access resources on the Internet via wireless telecommunications networks (“wireless networks”). For example, some of these mobile devices allow their users to access World Wide Web pages, exchange email and/or instant messages, and download files over the Internet.
A device known as a proxy gateway is often used to facilitate access by mobile devices to the Internet. The proxy gateway relays (“proxies”) requests and responses between mobile devices (clients) on the wireless network and servers on the Internet. Typically, the proxy gateway is implemented in a conventional server-class computer system that is coupled between the wireless network and the Internet. This computer system includes a gateway that translates/converts between the languages and protocols used on the Internet and the languages and protocols used by mobile devices. For example, the Internet is based mainly on the use of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and languages such as hypertext markup language (HTML) and extensible markup language (XML); mobile devices, on the other hand, commonly use wireless access protocol (WAP) and wireless markup language (WML) for purposes of Internet access.
In a client-server architecture such as described above, information may be provided to a client device (e.g., a mobile device) using either a “pull” model, a “push” model, or both. In the pull model, the client must explicitly request specific content, and the content is then provided to the client in response to the specific request. In the push model, information is provided to a client without the content having been explicitly requested (although the user may have had to initially subscribe to the push service).
A push proxy gateway is a device that may be used to facilitate a push service in order to allow mobile devices to receive Internet content. A push proxy gateway can be accessed using the Push Access Protocol (PAP). A push proxy gateway enables efficient delivery of e-mail, software, information, etc. PAP allows a server to initiate the transfer of content to one or more client wireless devices. The transfer may be initiated with a push notification, such as an alert, which indicates a link (e.g., a uniform resource identifier (URI)) to a resource (e.g., a file, image, software, web page, etc.) on an origin server. Once the push notification is activated via the resource link (e.g., by the user clicking on the URI), the user's device retrieves the resource.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a push notification being pushed to a set of wireless devices. A Push Initiator 107 transmits a push notification 109 to a push proxy gateway (PPG) 105. The push notification 109 indicates a resource link and set of one or more client recipients. The PPG 105 transmits the push notification 109 to a network cloud 103. The network cloud 103 transmits the push notification 109 to a set of wireless devices 101A-101F in accordance with the push notification 109 that indicates recipients (e.g., by IP address, cell phone number, etc.) and particular applications on the target client device. Application-level addressing permits pushed content to be targeted to a specific application on the device. Where there are multiple independent applications on the device, content may be targeted to a particular application by specifying the application identifier (ID) in the push request.
When the resource link of the notification is positively activated, (e.g., user selects the URI), the wireless application gateway (WAG) manages the resulting “pull” transaction. A wireless device 101A-101F may send one or more encoded WAP requests to the WAG, which then decodes the encoded WAP request. The WAP request may be translated into one or more HTTP requests and a request for a cookie. The WAG passes the requests to the origin server or resource host. The origin server creates a cookie for the requesting wireless device and passes the cookie data to the requesting wireless device. The cookie data file is stored on the requesting wireless device. While WAP Push applications are being used for the delivery of content to wireless devices, the current paradigm of message passing is inefficient, requiring round-trip delays, and consuming undesirable amounts of bandwidth.
The traditional model for delivering a push message to a wireless device also has other limitations. Although WAP Push client addressing permits user-defined addressing and device addressing, a pushed notification is targeted to a specific client device, rather than to a specific user of a client device. For example, a notification of new e-mail can be sent to a client device. The notification identifies an address, such as a URI, from which the e-mail can be retrieved. The e-mail is retrieved and downloaded to the client device after any user clicks on the address specified by the notification.
Any user-specific addressing provided by a push initiator is lost in the logical-to-physical mapping. For example, a push proxy gateway receives a client address to which the notification should be delivered. Where the addressing scheme is user-specific, addressing that allows a user to be addressed without the push initiator also supplying the physical identity of the client device, the push proxy gateway maps the given logical user address to a physical device. A look-up in a database may be performed to determine the appropriate physical address for the intended user and the logical user address, in the control portion of the Push Access Protocol (PAP) message, is discarded. The content portion of the push notification is directed to the intended device. Since a user of the intended device is not validated, any user who is aware of the address can access the resource URI in the notification.
Typically, client state information, such as cookies, are created by an application server or resource host and associated with a particular domain residing on the resource host. When a user requests to access the particular domain using an application on the client device, the client device searches for cookies pertaining to the particular domain. Accordingly, client state information may be provided to any requesting application on the client device. However, in many instances, a domain is optimized for particular applications. Applications that are disfavored for accessing the domain are not screened prior to returning requested information, resulting in wasted resources and poor user experience.